The longest war: Journalists, politicians and army veterans look back on our 25 years in the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State

Twenty five years ago, this week, the tanks were being fuelled and filled with shells, and the jet fighters were being fussed over with surgical care. Soldiers and pilots of a dozen nations were nervously waiting to be unleashed onto a desert battleground.

It would be the beginning of Gulf War One — the US-led Operation Desert Storm — and it would be the ignition point for a conflict that would eventually extend much further in time and territory.

A lone donkey surrounded by a hellish scene of oil fires that were set by the retreating Iraqi Army during the first Gulf War. (Getty Images) ()

They called Gulf War One the "Hundred Hour War", Bob Hawke recalls. He was prime minister in 1991 when Australia joined the Coalition against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein who had invaded Kuwait.

Interviewed for tonight's Nine News special The Longest War, Mr Hawke — a humanist, but not exactly a pacifist — acknowledged Saddam had to be driven out of Kuwait. He said a unilateral invasion could not be tolerated, "otherwise, what sort of a world are we going to have".

Bob Hawke was the Australian prime minister during the first Gulf War. ()

While politicians instigate history and soldiers partake in its making, journalists are often the witnesses and the recorders of the first draft.

And it was that way in 1991. Battalions of journalists from around the globe mustered in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to watch the war unfold.

Politicians and soldiers might remember it as the Hundred Hour War, but TV viewers around the world would remember it dubbed the "Video Game War" - a reference to the videos showing bombs dropped on targets in surreal and shocking detail.

New technology allowed video of the bombings to be transmitted and broadcast on-air faster than ever before. ()The videos were both mesmerising and horrifying. ()

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"Within hours of it occurring, we often saw the picture from the nose of the bomb, or the picture from another aircraft that would show the bomb going directly to [its target]," retired Australian army general Jim Molan said.

Reporter Rob Penfold was hard on the heels of Coalition troops when they raced over the sand-dune border and drove Saddam out of Kuwait.

He found a city littered with booby-traps, under a blackened sky that was Saddam's spiteful parting gesture as he retreated, leaving more than 600 oil wells uncapped and burning.

Nine reporter Robert Penfold was in Kuwait as Saddam's forces were being driven out. ()

"I remember as we drove in I could see them dotted along, the pillars of smoke rising up and eventually the entire sky was blacked out as a result of it," Penfold recalled.

"It took an incredible effort to get them out with workers coming in from around the world and spending months extinguishing the flames."

Bob Hawke remembers, with some pride, the role played by Australia in the aftermath of the war. Particularly the skill of our navy clearance divers who secured the port facilities, allowing Kuwait to start earning the petro-dollars it needed to rebuild. "Our divers ended up training the Americans," Mr Hawke said.

As for the "Hundred Hours", in fact, it was in many ways a war that continues today, with all its mutations.

Iraq remained a thorn in the side of the west. There were fears Saddam was building an arsenal of WMDs — the elusive rumoured weapons of mass destruction.

Nine newsreader Brian Henderson brought Australians nightly updates as the Gulf War evolved into the US invasion of Iraq. ()

And there were attacks on American embassies and US naval ships in foreign ports, all the evidence pointing to Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network.

But Bin Laden wanted to make his biggest splash on American home-turf, to take the terror war "downtown" — into the very heart of New York and Washington.

And he did, on September 11, 2001, with the destruction of the Twin Towers and the hole blown into the walls of the Pentagon.

The events of September 11 marked a new chapter of the war in the Middle East. ()

The Australian Prime Minister at this time was John Howard. He was in Washington on September 11 and hailed in Congress as the symbol of Australia's solidarity with the US.

It was a time of great tension. People on trains and planes and in cafes were nervous and newsrooms around the world seemed to brace almost daily for the next batch of bad news.

And there was plenty of it. Terror attacks in London, Madrid and Bali, where 88 Australians died.

"At that time it was such a bewildering, out of the blue attack. It had not been anticipated. Whatever people say now about what could have been construed by some of the intelligence that was available, there was no real apprehension that it was going to occur," Mr Howard said.

"Bali really brought terrorism to our very doorstep."

We would see in quick succession, the American assault into Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban.

They were driven out of the capital Kabul, but would bide their time, as Australia would learn to its cost.

And then Gulf War Two. The overthrow and execution of Saddam, followed by a relentless insurgency.

Saddam Hussein was executed on 30 December, 2006. ()

All this time the Royal Australian Navy had maintained ships in the Gulf, six months at a time.

That task has lasted 25 years and is Australia's longest continual military mission.

The latest manifestation of this seemingly endless war is Islamic State.

The Islamic State rose to power in the wake of the US-led Iraq invasion. ()

"The Longest War", airing tonight on Nine at 10.30pm, chronicles Australia's role in this quarter century of conflict, through the eyes of Bob Hawke, John Howard, retired Australian general Jim Molan and a woman who has seen the worst mankind can inflict on itself - Commander Janine Gregson, an Australian Navy reservist who worked as an anaesthetist at the major American the military hospital in Afghanistan.